


as your whisper stilled my heart

by kimaracretak



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/F, Murder, Sexual Content, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:20:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21678910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Dottie's actually being on her very best behaviour, the day in the summer of 1953 when Peggy pulls her gun in the streets of Sacramento. She can say with absolute conviction that the worst thing she's done in the past twenty four hours is follow Peg, a little bit - just to make sure she stays out of trouble. Nothing that would warrant violence, really, though considering Peggy's silhouette, her coat and hair in the wind and her strong arm extended unflinching, Dottie thinks maybe she needs to provoke that sort of look in her more often.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Dottie Underwood
Comments: 4
Kudos: 78
Collections: 300bpm Flash Exchange November 2019





	as your whisper stilled my heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).



Dottie's actually being on her very best behaviour, the day in the summer of 1953 when Peggy pulls her gun in the streets of Sacramento. She can say with absolute conviction that the worst thing she's done in the past twenty four hours is follow Peg, a little bit - just to make sure she stays out of trouble. Nothing that would warrant violence, really, though considering Peggy's silhouette, her coat and hair in the wind and her strong arm extended unflinching, Dottie thinks maybe she needs to provoke that sort of look in her more often.

But Dottie's in the shadows and it's like Peg doesn't even notice her, just angles the brim of her hat a little bit with her free hand and puts a neat bullet in between the eyes of a very unremarkable man. It's one of the most beautiful things she's ever seen, almost pretty enough that she can forget Peg didn't do it for her.

There's not a lot of smoke from such a small gun but it lingers, and Peggy watches it hang in the air with a lack of concern that seems at odds with what she's just done. What she's waiting for, what she thinks she'll see, Dottie doesn't much care. Her first priority is what it's always been: make sure no one else gets to her Peg first.

But it's rude to interrupt, so Dottie's silent as she pushes herself off the brick wall and makes her way to Peggy's side and waits for the space between their breaths to vanish.

Peggy, contemplative, doesn't move.

"Clean," Dottie says, after the gunsmoke's dissipated, after her arms slide around Peggy's waist but before the blood has managed to run over either of their shoes. "But out in the open like this? I expect more from a woman of your stature."

Peggy inhales, tenses, and makes not the slightest move to get away. Once upon a time Dottie might have fancied her afraid, but she knows better now, knows, even, that things are better when Peggy thinks she's got things in hand. And Dottie likes things best of all when she's got Peggy in _her_ hands, so everything's going wonderfully, really, for everyone except the poor man on the ground.

Not that Dottie cares about him. She trips her fingers light over the bones of Peggy's ribs where they stand out against the thin silk of her shirt and she doesn't even try to pull out a single one because she's on her _very_ best behaviour, impressing even herself. She doesn't like to think that maybe it's because something feels different about today.

That Peggy's awfully quiet.

She cups Peggy's cheek in one hand. Trails her other hand down Peggy's arm til her fingers lay over each of Peg's on the gun. Skin and metal are both warm, and Dottie curls her hand around Peg's on the grip. "Oh, Peg, you're alright. Not the first time not the last, and I'll always be there to kiss it better if you want."

Peggy sighs, and Dottie cranes her neck over her shoulder to see that she's maybe smiling, just a bit, the tired smile that Dottie likes to imagine only she ever gets to see. "Killing dirty cops is never simple," she says. "And I think this one's got more connections than I'd figured out yet."

"So you're saying both our lives are about to get a lot more difficult." 

"I said absolutely nothing about _us_ ," Peggy snaps, but she doesn't resist as Dottie pulls her fingers away from the grip of the pistol and walks them back into shadows. The light's dimmer there, but now that she's facing her Peg properly, Dottie can see the skin around her eyes bruised the deep purple of exhaustion, the faint trembling of skin over her neck as her pulse flutters with nerves.

She looks _terrible_ , even accounting for the fact that she doesn't like to kill. Dottie wants to bite her better, but fears her teeth have grown dull over the past few years of disuse.

"You're still here, which says plenty about the state of us." Peggy flinches as a siren sounds blocks over, and Dottie reconsiders. Lifts the hand not busy clicking the pistol's safety back on and slipping it into her empty holster and rests it against Peggy's cheek, light as a snowflake. She's _cold_ , for all it's the dead of morning of a summer's day. "Peggy, don't you know by now I just want to make things better for you? Please let me help."

Other days, better days, that would get a quick response, something sharp and irritated and untrue about how Dottie's help only makes things worse, and that would be enough to burn off the dust and the lethargy and the fear that's not fear of something nipping at her heels. Today, Peggy meets her eyes with absolute sincerity and even manages to sound sad when she says, "No, I don't need your help. But I do need two rolls of film, car keys, and someone to hold my hat for a week or two."

Peggy doesn't ask, but then, she's never been good at asking, especially not when she thinks she already knows the answers. It's thrilling, almost, that her Peg could take this part of her for granted - that all their collisions have _mattered_.

Film and car keys she has plenty of in her purse, and when she hands them over she's gratified by the absolute lack of surprise on Peg's face. "Not sure which car that one is," Dottie has to admit. "I think it was one of the blue ones. Parked in front of a bank."

"Well," Peggy laughs, short and rather like she wishes she hadn't. "I'm sure I can figure that out."

"Of course you will," Dottie smiles with more lightness than she feels. It's too quiet around them, it's been too quiet for what feels like hours. "You're brilliant, after all, and quite good at running. Even when I'm not behind you."

"Who said I was running?" Peggy asks, too quickly.

"Your face. Your supplies. The fact that you're still standing here looking at me and you haven't even bothered to pull that body somewhere else." Dottie dips her head to brush her lips against the side of Peggy's neck, and the last thing she sees is Peg's eyes falling shut.

Her lipstick is pale, but there's still enough to stain. She breathes in the chill of smoke and perfume and fits her teeth around Peggy's collarbone, smiles against the vibrations in Peggy's throat as she says, "I still have my hat, if you haven't noticed."

"I'll take it," Dottie murmurs. She likes promising Peggy things, especially ones she might be able to give her with little effort or a modicum of violence. "If you give me a kiss for the road. Just once, like before."

Peggy laughs, and Dottie's more than gratified when she wraps her arms around Dottie's waist and digs her nails into her back, the first real spark of life. "It was never just once, not ever. Not in the loos, not in your flat, not in -"

Dottie silences her with a kiss, a real one, hard and biting right on the edge of blood. Peggy kisses back, open-mouthed and fast and breaking away far too soon. "We're outside."

"We're in an _alleyway_ ," Dottie points out. "And you hide for a living."

"In an alley with a _corpse_ ," Peggy hisses back. "Where anyone could walk past."

Dottie trails a hand down to the waistband of Peggy's trousers, hooks two fingers in her belt and dips the others beneath the fabric. "If you believed that, you wouldn't have killed him here." To think otherwise is to believe Peggy is slipping, is no longer her beloved match.

"You," Peggy starts, and the rest of her words vanish into a sigh as Dottie pushes past Peg's utilitarian underwear and flattens her hand against her cunt. Her trousers are too tight for any real angle, any proper movement, but neither of them need more right now. Peg's warmer than a gun and twice as slick, though it'd take her time to get properly worked up. Dottie just curls her fingers as much as she can, holds her Peg tight for a moment and tries to memorise once more the feeling of her breath against her cheek, the mirror burn between her own legs.

She doesn't bother counting breaths, just tightens and relaxes her grip in time with Peg's heartbeat. She could do more. Would have, once upon a time - still knows all the tricks that would have Peggy wet as a flood and writing on her fingertips in a matter of minutes. It wouldn't be the first alleyway they've fought or fucked in.

She doesn't. They are, Dottie thinks with an unexpected rush of nostalgia, getting old.

Finally Peggy straightens, and Dottie withdraws her hand on cue. Sucks the taste and faint dampness of Peggy off her fingers and with her other hand plucks the black hat from Peg's head. "Better run."

_Stay safe._

"You, too," is all Peggy says, before she melts back into the gathering fog.

_Thank you._

**

By the time Dottie hears of Peggy's capture, it's at least three days past the time she would have expected Peg to take to find her way out.

Dottie can't remember if she's ever cried herself to sleep, but that night she wonders for the first time if she could. If it would make anything better.

Instead, she packs her bags and puts on Peggy's hat and doesn't bother trying to sleep at all.

In the plane's restroom mirror, she catches a glimpse of herself with eyes sunken deep into the hollows of her skull, skin violet with old blood, old tiredness, old wounds. Old ... _her_.

Years of training have her reaching for her compact and foundation, but something stills her hand. She looks just like Peg did, that last day in Sacramento. And she's so missed wearing Peg's face.

She touches skin freezing under recycled air and wonders how long its been since either of them have slept.

**

Prison officials are all alike, no matter this one tries to style himself a diplomat instead. He's still too busy trying to follow the lines of her legs up under her skirt as she leans over his desk. Still utterly unaware that she's able to read all his notes like that, for all they're upside down and in penmanship so bad it's going to get someone killed.

Get him killed, not that he needs to know it just yet.

"All I'm saying, sir," Dottie says for the third time, "is that you need to think carefully about who gives you information. You have someone of mine, and I want her back."

She's used to breaking out of prisons. Trust Peg to have her contemplating for the first time what it'd be like to break into one.

"And I've told you, Miss," the man says, "that this is a matter of direct interest to the motherland, and -"

Dottie presses her arms tighter around her breasts and his eyes drop to her cleavage as if drawn by magic. "Not to interrupt, but I'm trying to pay you an awful lot more than you're worth to give me someone I need. You're really only making things harder for yourself."

The man's lips thin, and his eyes don't leave her chest. "How much, exactly?"

Dottie counts out the bills, leaves them all tight against the desk under her fingertips. American dollars, irresistible to all Russians and far less than Peg's freedom is worth. It's not Dottie's money, anyways. "This much. After I get her back."

He eyes the money, eyes her chest. Calculates, perhaps, how much trouble he's going to get in. Then: "Fine. Follow me."

Her heels are very loud on the cement, so much more than his thick-soled boots. Dottie keeps careful watch of the swing of his arms, the slight outward curve of his pocket where the keys lie, the way he's strapped his gun too far towards his back to be of any use.

It has a silencer, though, and that, and the number of steps she takes and the number of turns the man leads her through - it is all that matters, because the silent doors on either side of the hallway don't change.

It takes three keys to unlock Peggy's door, and one blow to the man's head for him to crumple. Peg comes into view as he crumples, sitting on her poor excuse for a bed with her hands cuffed behind her, and the sight of her is the first thing to bring a smile to Dottie's face in days. "I said you were good at running," she says before Peg can get a word out, and pouts to show how truly wounded she is.

Peggy just rolls her eyes. "Thought you were never coming back to Russia."

Dottie pulls the fourth key from the fake bureaucrat's pocket and sets about undoing the cuffs. "I make all the exceptions for you, sweetheart."

"That's the most believable thing you've ever said," Peggy sighs, rubbing circulation back into her wrists as she stands. "Are you leaving him?"

"Course not." Dottie relieves the man of his gun, offers it grip first to Peggy. "Honours?"

Something that might have been disappointment flashes through Peggy's eyes and she heads for the door, turning her back.

But she doesn't say no.

And she doesn't stop Dottie as she pulls the trigger, just listens as Dottie kills one more person for her.

"Time to run," Peggy says, and, warm gun in one hand and Peggy's wrist in the other, Dottie does.


End file.
